CHAPTER IX.

The young skater duly recovered, and thenceforward
Mr. Wood’s popularity in the village was established,
and the following summer he started a swimming-class,
to which the young men flocked with more readiness
than they commonly showed for efforts made to improve
them.

For my own part I had so realized, to my shame, that
one may feel very adventurous and yet not know how
to venture or what to venture in the time of need,
that my whole heart was set upon getting the school-master
to teach me to swim and to dive, with any other lessons
in preparedness of body and mind which I was old enough
to profit by. And if the true tales of his own
experiences were more interesting than the Penny Numbers,
it was better still to feel that one was qualifying
in one’s own proper person for a life of adventure.

During the winter Mr. Wood built a boat, which was
christened the Adela, after his wife.
It was an interesting process to us all. I hung
about and did my best to be helpful, and both Jem and
I spoiled our everyday trousers, and rubbed the boat’s
sides, the day she was painted. It was from the
Adela that Jem and I had our first swimming-lessons,
Mr. Wood lowering us with a rope under our arms, by
which he gave us as much support as was needed, whilst
he taught us how to strike out.

We had swimming-races on the canal, and having learned
to swim and dive without our clothes, we learnt to
do so in them, and found it much more difficult for
swimming and easier for diving. It was then that
the trousers we had damaged when the Adela
was built came in most usefully, and saved us from
having to attempt the at least equally difficult task
of persuading my mother to let us spoil good ones in
an amusement which had the unpardonable quality of
being “very odd.”

Dear old Charlie had as much fun out of the boat as
we had, though he could not learn to dive. He
used to look as if every minute of a pull up the canal
on a sunny evening gave him pleasure; and the brown
Irish spaniel Jem gave him used to swim after the
boat and look up in Charlie’s face as if it
knew how he enjoyed it. And later on, Mr. Wood
taught Bob Furniss to row and Charlie to steer; so
that Charlie could sometimes go out and feel quite
free to stop the boat when and where he liked.
That was after he started so many collections of insects
and water-weeds, and shells, and things you can only
see under a microscope. Bob and he used to take
all kinds of pots and pans and nets and dippers with
them, so that Charlie could fish up what he wanted,
and keep things separate. He was obliged to keep
the live things he got for his fresh-water aquarium
in different jam-pots, because he could never be sure
which would eat up which till he knew them better,
and the water-scorpions and the dragon-fly larvae
ate everything. Bob Furniss did not mind pulling
in among the reeds and waiting as long as you wanted.
Mr. Wood sometimes wanted to get back to his work,
but Bob never wanted to get back to his. And
he was very good-natured about getting into the water
and wading and grubbing for things; indeed, I think
he got to like it.